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Growing Brain-Infecting Parasites

Mira Kim, SPU Senior, Research Assistant, Seattle BioMed

While many Seattle Pacific students
spend their summers working at camps
and coffee shops, Mira Kim spent hers
growing parasites at Seattle BioMed. “I
call them my babies,” Kim laughs as she
describes crescent-shaped Toxoplasma
gondii.

She breeds the parasite to help
researchers discover a cure for toxoplasmosis.
In the United States, the
disease, borne by a bacteria that lives in
cat feces, is most commonly known as
the reason pregnant women should not
clean a litter box. Toxoplasmosis causes
flu-like symptoms for most people, but
can lead to blindness in severe cases.

More than 60 million people may be
infected in the U.S., but most will never
show symptoms.

Kim is one of several undergraduate
SPU students who work at Seattle
BioMed, which strives to eliminate the
world’s most devastating infectious diseases.
During summer 2013, Kim presented
a poster session about toxoplasmosis
and met a French woman in her
mid-30s who had the disease when she
was 8 years old.

“I never thought I’d be able to meet
someone who had this disease,” she says.
“It was exciting, because I’m doing this
research because of people like her.”